Although generally thought of as a route-climbing skill, onsighting or flashing routes is the ideal strategy in bouldering competitions as well. Not only do you have the most strength, and the greatest chance to send on the first try of a boulder, but attempting a problem more than once will tire you out quickly, reducing your chances of finishing subsequent problems.

Without further ado we present Onsight Tips from 2 Masters:

Alex Megos

photo – Megos

Alex has blown the climbing world away by onsighting 9a. To put this into perspective, the current hardest route in the world is graded 9b+.

Jerry Moffat

Jerry Moffat is one of the legendary British climbers from the 80′s who pushed the envelope of what is possible. Known for both his onsight and redpoint achievements, in this video he gives very practical strategies for dealing with nerves, and getting the right frame of mind for onsight climbing.

Posted by Danger on

March 7, 2013

So you’re climbing Whites or Silvers at STONE or Xinyi, or you’re stuck in the easy 5.10′s. How do you get better and start crushing the Yellows? How do you make the leap from flailing up the routes at Y17 to conquering the technical routes and monster overhangs at Neihu?

Hit the weight room? Do more pullups? Hang off the fingerboard? If you are reasonably fit(at a reasonable weight for your height, able to do 5 pullups), the answer is probably not.

Posted by Danger on

January 29, 2013

Recently an image has been making the rounds on Facebook in Taiwan, of a plaque made by a Japanese schoolteacher, which we thought is relevant to climbing.

A rough translation of the plaque reads

The law of 1.01 : 1.01365= 37.8
The law of 0.99: 0.99365 =0.03

In layman’s terms:

When we eek out 1% more effort every day, our abilities can grow almost 38 times over the course of a year.

When we slack off 1% every day, our abilities diminish greatly over the course of a year. (to 0.03 of our original ability)

Is this principle literally true? Probably not. You are not going to be climbing 38 times harder from spending 1% more time training everyday, and you’re not going to be a weakling a year later if you slack off 1% of the time.

However the general principle holds — pushing yourself just that 1% more beyond your previous limit every day, can have a huge exponential effect over time — and the reverse holds if you slack off!